PRESS RELEASE
Aesop The Storyteller
World Premiere – Edinburgh Fringe, August 2008
Hill Street Theatre - Venue 41
12.25 (1.30) 1-24th August (not Weds)
Tickets: £5-£9 (Family discounts and concessions available)
Download a sound sample at www.myspace.com/leonthepoet
At the 2006 Fringe, Leon Conrad was poet-in-residence at the First Edinburgh Food Festival. At the Edinburgh Fringe in 2007, he was invited back to be poet-in-residence at the Pleasance. This year he presents the world premiere of an entertaining and thought-provoking show featuring an original blend of traditional storytelling and performance poetry. Aesop The Storyteller is suitable for all the family from ages 6 and up.
Brief Synopsis
From the moment of his birth, Aesop seems to be born with everything against him. He’s ugly, hunchbacked, lame and mute. On top of it all, he’s born a slave. Through a combination of native intelligence, luck and divine intervention, he’s granted two very special gifts – the gift of wisdom and the gift of speech. He learns to modify his insights to make them more palatable by wrapping them up in fables, drawing on characters from the animal world to illustrate his points.
Aesop uses his gifts and storytelling abilities to talk himself out of slavery, until one day he chooses to tell one story too many … and has to face the consequences.
Aesop is said to have been born around 620BC. Over 2,600 years later, few people know his own story, but his fables are as relevant today as they were in his lifetime. Leon Conrad wrote Aesop The Storyteller in 2007, to commemorate the 200th anniversary year of the passing of the Act of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. In it, Aesop’s own life story is interspersed with some of his best-loved fables. The show is available to tour, and is suitable for family audiences – ages 6 and above.
A book of 12 newly versified fables with accompanying CD by Leon Conrad also called ‘Aesop The Storyteller’ is published by Aladdin’s Cave Publishing.
Leon is co-founder of Touchwaves, an innovative group combining spoken word and music improvisation.
For more information, visit www.touchwaves.com
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